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Time Wasters, Pointless but Fun

Times have changed since the best way to pass an idle 10 minutes was Nokia’s famous Snake, or whatever flavor of game was built into your old, dumb cellphone. These basic games were simple entertainment and they were fun — to an extent. But with smartphones, we have thousands of app-enabled ways to pass the time waiting in line at the post office or even when struck with insomnia.

As someone who works online, I carry a smartphone or tablet nearly all the time. So I have my fair share of experience disposing of a boring moment with a fun app, and I have a few tips.

First, forget games like Flight Control, Fruit Ninja or your favorite version of tower defense. If you want to try a game to eat up a spare moment, then you need something very simple, like Where’s the Pixel. It’s free on the iPhone’s iOS operating system, and it’s exactly what it sounds like — a chase to see how many times you can find one black pixel on the otherwise white screen of your iPhone in a minute. Tap it, find it, tap it and so on. It will give a score, you can brag about your score on Twitter or Facebook, and that’s about all there is.

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DollarOrigami+, with its 3-D animation, is meant to be challenging.

But heed this warning: the game is so pointless and yet strangely addictive that you’ll love it, play it obsessively and then delete it from your phone.

For similar effortless, pointless fun on a phone with an Android operating system, try the free app Paper Toss. It’s weirdly close to being like the real thing, with all the fun of trying to aim a scrunched-up paper ball at the trash can but none of the mess.

Although these apps do chew up the minutes, there is little going on except a bit of hand-eye coordination improvement. If you’ve got a moment to spare and fancy actually prodding your brain, what better than a comic strip? And since we’re talking about high-tech stuff, the most suitable app has to be the XKCD Browser, a free Android app that lets you quickly see the most recent edition of the famous intellectually funny Web strip and browse back issues.

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Users of SketchBook Mobile Express can make simple drawings or attempt more complex renderings.

Maybe that’s not your ideal strip, so there’s always the official Dilbert app, free on Android and iOS, or the Garfield app (again bothplatforms, free). Pick your newspaper comic strip, basically, and see if there’s an app for it — there are many.

If doodling is your way of passing time, then your phone, packed with touch-screen electronics, can help. There are drawing apps of every kind, but perhaps the simplest and most satisfyingly close to the real thing is Autodesk’s SketchBook Mobile Express (free, Android and iOS). Used simply, it’ll let you doodle as if you were using a pen or pencil on paper. Or you can learn to use its more clever features and try to really sketch the scene in the airport waiting lounge or wherever.

If your creative time-wasting habits are more tactile, try some origami with some paper you always have on you: cash. The app for that is Dollar Origami+ for $0.99 on iOS. Unlike some origami apps that typically have simple drawings peppered with dotted lines, this app has neat 3-D animations of real bills being folded. The animations are very clear and concise and you can copy them precisely to create everything from an origami duck to a neat ring, though this is very detailed and you need to be somewhere you can sit still for a while (and have better finger skills than mine).

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The app for QI Lite is aimed at trivia buffs.

There’s a similar app for $1.99 on Android called Money Origami, but it is a little simpler and a lot more traditional in terms of the instructions.

If all this talk of wasting time upsets you, because you feel you should be learning something, then you’ll love the QI Lite app. It’s an offshoot of a British TV quiz show about oddly amusing trivia. It’s a great way to pass time browsing through countless weird facts about the world, in the form of short articles arranged by topic. It’ll teach you that Asteroid 18610 was named Arthurdent (from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”) and that Isaac Newton’s father was illiterate. The app is free on iOS, and there’s a paid edition with more content.

Some of my favorite time wasters are on this list. But don’t get too engrossed in them while you wait in line, lest you accidentally bump into someone and spoil your Where’s the Pixel score.

Quick Calls

Webr is the latest app that promises to let you build a whole Web site to promote your writing, ideas or even a product — all composed inside an iPhone app. It advises that no knowledge of coding is needed because you pick from predesigned themes and customize the content to suit your ambitions. There is social networking integration. And the app has been newly updated to include blog commenting via Disqus. ...Navigon just updated its Android GPS navigation app with new features like 3-D elevation (as an in-app paid upgrade for $9.99) and a handy trick to help you navigate back to your car on foot when you arrive somewhere new.

A version of this article appears in print on August 9, 2012, on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Time Wasters, Pointless But Fun. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe